Depression: The Actual Truth

Look, I’m sure you’ve heard this part before But I need to tell you a story. It’s a story we all know too well, And yet, we can’t seem to understand enough.

See, depression— It isn’t a choice. It isn’t a word to label the sorrow we Wake with one morning And forget about as the day progresses Because there are better things to do with ourselves Than to mope. Than to cry. Than to hold the shattered pieces of a cold heart in our two sweaty, cold hands. See, it doesn’t work like that.

Depression— It’s a sickness, a disease. Like a parasite, it feeds On your body, on your mind Eats up your joy, leaves rotting black behind. And it won’t go away. And the heart shaped hole in the hole filled vessel for the parasitic creature, She tries to fill it with locked doors and Unanswered phones and Little red lines on her drained skin, while They try to fill it with pills she can’t name And questions she can’t answer So the spiral spirals faster and faster.

That’s when he realizes just how delicate life truly is Cut a bit too deep, right. Take a bit too much, sure. But fifteen years old and wondering If the consequences are really worth The guilt nailed to his back And the hole filled with plastic And elastic and Elmer’s glue seeping From a spider web of cracks? Can I tell you a secret? It is.

That’s what she thought with a knife clenched in her two sweaty, cold hands. That’s what he was so certain of, swallowing three months prescription, wishing he could still cry.

The Actual Truth in fact is this: It was the desperation to get away from that ‘thing’ feasting in their heads. They weren’t trying to kill themselves Even if that’s what they believed too. In actuality, they were only trying to squash an insect. Don’t call them selfish, please don’t you dare. Because it’s not, nor was it ever their fault. Depression isn’t a choice, It’s a Parasite.

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